Day Is Gone
by wxnston
Summary: Attacked and left for dead on her kitchen floor, Tara Knowles is hospitalised and doctors don't know if she can survive through the extent of her injuries. Jax Teller has to deal with the aftermath of the brutality brought onto his wife and has his club search for the unknown attacker who is a lot closer to home than they think. [Season 6, AU]
1. Bloodstream

_Hello. This will be staying as a shortened drabble for the time being, however I may continue and add chapters later on. Please feel free to review, I always appreciate feedback._

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 **Day Is Gone**

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Gasping for a breath of air that felt like hot knives in her throat and tasted like blood on her tongue, Tara heaved against the pain that quickly spread through her body. She was curled on the kitchen floor, hazel eyes wide in panic and all she could see was **red**. Between each gasp, a pained cry rose in her throat and turned into a gurgling cough. "Oh –" She managed, swallowing down the blood with struggled gulps as her eyesight returned after a few panicked blinks. Eli lay next to her, blood pooling beneath his limp body and as far as Tara could tell – he was dead. She wondered for a moment if she too was dead, the doctor in her unable to rationalise what had happened to her. All she knew was that there was **pain** , on every nerve ending of every part of her body and it felt like Hell.

"J – ax?" She stuttered, closing her eyes again in an attempt to calm the thumping headache that pounded away in her skull. It was if somebody had hit her with a sledgehammer, and then the flashbacks flickered through her mind – pulling her back in time. Back, back, back… Gemma. Whimpering, Tara felt hot tears stream down her cheeks and pool into the corners of her mouth. "Jax!" She cried out louder this time, her ribs protesting against it and forcing another excruciating cough to rise in her chest. She was burning, and the blood sputtered past her lips and onto the floor as she bit on her tongue. _It hurts, it hurts. Somebody please help me._

It was as if her prayers were answered as she heard the familiar rumble of her husband's motorcycle, and it encouraged her to try and push herself up on weakened forearms. But her head felt heavier than it had before, and her palms were slippery with her own blood. She was helpless, she was defenceless, she was…

"I'm dying, oh god. I'm dying." She heaved, feeling her heart flutter as something solid pulled her up from the floor. "I'm dying." She whispered again and again, opening her eyes only to see Jax's face above her. She couldn't hear his screams, and could only smile in an attempt to tell him how much she loved him and their sons. But nothing came out, and she gasped for a breath, watching his tears stream down his cheeks. Watching him scream into his phone, not sure of what he was saying.

Lifting bloodied fingertips to his cheek, Tara could feel herself slipping but grit her teeth and bit down onto the desire to live. She was a fighter, she could survive – she was… exhausted. "Jax." She murmured, not knowing if his name passed her lips loud enough for him to hear. "Take care –" Another gasp. " – of my boys." She felt his hands clutch the back of her head, his lips kissing her face and glanced up at the kitchen window to see flashing blue lights before everything faded into dark.


	2. If I Lay Here

_Hello readers, so I'm shocked but pleasantly surprised that you've all reviewed and left very positive feedback of this story. Thank you so much for taking the time to read, and I'm glad you all enjoyed the tester chapter as much as you did. I didn't plan on posting another chapter so soon, but here we are!_

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 **Chapter Two**

 **If I Lay Here**

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Her fingers were cold against his touch, but soft beneath his thumb and he wondered if she could feel him here by her side, or the gentle trail he stroked along her bone white knuckles. Tara had survived through the night, her weakened heart suffering two cardiac arrests before finally stabilising with the help of whatever drugs they'd injected into her veins. He knew she would pull through, she _had_ to. Tara was far too strong to just die on him now. Not after all they'd been through, not after the love he'd bled for her. She was his fighter, his _everything_. Jax understood the chaos and the destruction that this life had to offer better than most, had seen death claim the lives of men he once had the honour of calling brothers and even then he was been able to stand tall and accept it for the greater good of this club. But not this, not Tara.

Seeing her like this, propped up in a hospital bed with a tube fed down her throat with all sorts of machines keeping her heart steady like some damn laboratory experiment – it broke him. "I'm so sorry." He whispered against the strain in the back of his throat and shook his head, hating himself more than he ever had in this life as he leaned forward from the chair he sat in to touch her cheek. "You gotta fight this, baby." He felt his tears slip into the cracks of his lips as he crowded into her space to look over her features. She was paler than he remembered and she looked peaceful, her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling with each breath the ventilator administered to her lungs. Stroking the palm of his hand over her forehead, Jax bit back his overwhelming need to collapse to his knees in despair and instead looked to the ceiling for answers. He felt useless, completely and utterly stripped of any power to help her through this battle.

The doctors didn't have any answers to give him, everything was either ' _she made it through the night, let's take it one step at a time'_ or _'it's in God's hands now, we've done everything we possibly can to make her comfortable._ That wasn't good enough, nothing was ever good enough and he wanted to tear the room apart piece by piece to unleash the anger that burned through him at being thrown in limbo.

He knew nothing about what happened to her or why it happened, only that she'd been stabbed through the skull with something sharp and it would've killed her if it had entered her brain just a little bit deeper. Five millimetres and he would've been visiting the morgue instead of the hospital, and the doctors had the nerve to tell him she was _lucky_. Luck doesn't come around in the kind of brutality that was inflicted on his wife, and it sure as hell doesn't leave her fighting for her life. One thing was for certain, Jax was going to find whatever twisted piece of shit did this and he was going to cut their hearts right out of their chests.

Leaning in to brush the tip of his nose along her cheek, Jax closed his eyes and pressed gentle kisses along her cheek and swallowed. "They ain't giving you a chance, Tara. Some of 'em look at you like you're already gone." He whispered into her ear, the pain cutting through his voice like razorblades as he spoke to her like she could hear him. "I wanna smash their faces against the floor for even thinking that you're not strong enough to come back to me, but I know you'd kill me if I pulled that kind of shit." A sad chuckle escaped him as he envisioned what her face would look like if he hit out at the doctors who were once her colleagues, but the humour of it all died after a couple of seconds and reality set in again.

She couldn't laugh with him and his stomach turned at the thought of never hearing her speak or smile or even open her eyes to look at him again. "I need you to prove them wrong, Tara. I need you to wipe the pity off their faces and show them how tough you are, and that the only place you're goin' is home to see our sons." Running his thumb back and forth over her cheekbone, Jax kept his face close by her ear and listened to the heart monitor's rhythmic beeping, telling himself that if her heart was strong enough to survive two cardiac arrests then it was strong enough to survive this coma.

"I love you." He kissed her skin, being careful not to nudge the tube taped to her lips as he reluctantly pulled back from her to look over her face again. The door opened then and a nurse walked in with a clipboard full of notes in hand, and Jax furrowed his brow at the young woman, noticing his crew standing in the hall before the door shut again. "Mr. Teller –"

"I'm not leaving her, so you better turn around and get out." He ground out, knowing she'd come to inform him that the visiting hours were over for the day. But Jax wasn't ready to leave Tara, he hadn't left the room since they started her heart for the second time and wasn't planning to either. She parted her lips to argue back when he slammed a closed fist against the back of the chair. "Get the hell outta here!" He roared at her through his teeth, tension building in his shoulders and an intense rage flaring up into his chest as he glared at the woman who flinched at his outburst. She looked terrified, and he didn't care. He didn't have the strength to care about anyone or anything else, and he heaved for a breath of air as the wall he'd been trying to hold together in his head crumbled. "Get out, get the fuck out."

He turned around, glanced at his wife and heard the door open. He kept trying to shove coffins and gravestones out of his head, but the more he avoided the idea of having to stand above Tara as they lowered her into the ground – the more it twisted at his mind. "Jax, c'mon." Blinking down at his feet at the familiar sound of his mother's voice, Jax peered over his shoulder and couldn't catch the sob from ripping from his throat as she wrapped her arms around him.

"You can't do nothin' more for her, baby. The docs gotta do their job, okay?" Gemma's voice soothed the burn, but not enough to pull him out of this mess. Pressing his face into her shoulder, Jax gulped back his tears as she rubbed her hands up and down his back. He knew she was right, knew he couldn't sit in that damn chair and expect her to jump up at any second. Tara needed to recover from this and him being her, him screaming at the people who were trying their hardest to save her for him – it wasn't helping. "Okay?" She asked, leaning back to stroke his face and he nodded. "Yeah." She gave him a teary smile and Jax let her pull him in for a kiss to the cheek.

He sighed, looking back at Tara with exhausted eyes as he reluctantly made his way for the door. It didn't feel right leaving her alone, but she was a fighter. She was _his_ fighter.


End file.
